LIFE

Life was co-financed by Skydance Media and Sony (which contributed 1/4 of the budget) for $58 million after rebates.  Sony handled worldwide distribution duties.  Life was originally going to be released in August 2017, but a scheduling war with the similarly themed Alien: Covenant began.  FOX dated Alien for Life‘s August position and in response, Sony bumped up the movie to the May Memorial Day frame.  FOX then moved Alien to the week before the Memorial Day frame.  When Sony released the first trailer for Life, it was well received and landed more views in its first 24 hours than The Martian and this prompted Sony to move the date to March 24.  This left a tight 18 week post-production schedule before the picture would have to be in the can for release.

Sony heavily marketed Life and iSpotTV has the national TV ad spend at $22.5 million (that number was posted 5 days prior to its release), plus millions more was spent in the days up to its release and after.  After other traditional means of marketing and distribution expenses, the domestic P&A spend was certainly north of $40 million.  The movie received mixed notices from critics and was tracking for an opening in the $15 – $20 million range.  It bowed against Power Rangers and Chips and opened on the low end of its expectations at $16,744,239 — placing #4 for the weekend led by holdover Beauty And The Beast.  Audiences were more harsh than critics and gave Life a terrible C+ cinemascore and it fell a steep 55.6% in its second frame to $5,551,767.  The third session declined 57.3% to $2,371,217 and the domestic run closed with $30,234,022.

Life pulled in soft numbers in the majority of the world’s markets, with the China release posting the highest gross at $19.8 million.  The international tally came to $70.3 million. Sony would see returned about $55 million after theaters take their percentage of the worldwide gross, which would not even cover global P&A expenses.